Donovan Green
Professor Wachanga
New Communication Technologies
08 February 2018
Digital Nativism
The article is a dissection of Marc Prensky’s assertions that there is a great divide between people he labels as “digital immigrants” and “digital natives”. Essentially he shames individuals who are middle aged and older (otherwise born pre-ipod era) and praises the newer generations who are much more adapted to technology. However this article authored by Jamie McKenzie is a critique of each claim proposed from Prensky.
One of the major routes in which Prensky believes technology benefits the youth is through video games which can be utilized as a learning tool. His reasoning behind this is due to the fact that students of this generation gather information differently than past decades and even hints at the fact that our brains could possibly have physically changed. However on the same token, McKenzie attacks this claim by explaining that Prensky uses questionable language that isn’t definitive such as “very likely” and “whether or not this is literally true”. In addition he challenges the credibility of the researcher that Prensky sites in his arguments. At the root of the issue is that Prensky misspells the researcher’s name furthermore deteriorating the professionalism of his assertions.
Continuing, McKenzie argues that Prensky skews the information in his article and possibly could be flat-out lying to consumers. Some of the details that Prensky fails to acknowledge is that video gaming is both negatively related to age and that it is clearly more favored amongst males than females. Specifically in regards to video games, McKenzie states about the negative impact that violent video games have amongst the youth although I believe this is a unnecessary argument because what school would implement violent video games for education anyways? McKenzie ends the article by warning consumers to be leery of false prophets and to always gain the full knowledge about various topics.